Bob, i havent actually go the Bell imel PLans for their ho 229 yet, i ordered them on the 20th of july so i am surprised i havent go them yet.

Heiner
what was the basis for the model that you have developed? was it the drago kit or Mr Bentley's drawings or did you calculate the required reflex and the rest of the design from first priniciples? I am working with Gary on his design and i am interested in the aspects of your design that make it successful, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.

I bought 2 Horten from an older man in Germany, he cought a balsa allergy. The 229 V2 was broken in two, I fixed it and it flies great. The secound was not finished, I received it about 80% done.

I took the DRAGON-kit and the drawings from A. Bentley to make the Inlets, housings of the turbine and cannopy scale. All the calculation, for washout, CG, etc was made by the German Horten Team. They own original Horten drawings from Reimar Horten and they are using the Laschka computer programm to calculate.
Also for my new project, a Ho-229 V3 in 1/6 or 1/5 scale, I will order the CNC-cut rips from them, to be sure the Ho -229 will do propper.

They invested during the last 20 years so may h , they want to make a little money now, but they don't want to tell the secrets!

What I found out is, if you scale the original plans, your modell should fly also, but it is very sensitive for CG position and thrust angle.

Arthur Bentley made new drawings from many information he could collect during 40 years. He visited the Smithsonian Institute and he has also original Horten production drawings from the German Museum in Munich, the drawings the Americans gave back to Germany after WWII. Arthur Bentley worked for an English airplane company, so you will be surprised what detailed drawings you can order from him!

Heiner

Heiner,

No surprise at all. As I had mentioned, I was given his name by one of the curators at the Smithsonian and his website. It's amazing what a wealth of information he's made available through his awesome drawings.

the German Horten Team has a lot of drawings, also for the Minifan Ho229 (1/10) scale. But they want to make a CNC-cut Ho-229 V3 kit next winter, because of that reason, they will not give away drawings that may be copied.

It's been my experience that the cost of anything from Germany is such that if you want something from there you better *really* want it. I'll be looking carefully at any information on that 1/10 scale kit. I certainly hope that it's all that and a bag of chips.

They invested during the last 20 years so may h , they want to make a little money now, but they don't want to tell the secrets!
I found out is, if you scale the original plans, your modell should fly also, but it is very sensitive for CG position and thrust angle.

Heiner

Heiner,

Your last statement regarding scaling original plans is very telling. What I read from this is that with the planform and airfoils we can get from Mr. Bentley's drawings we should be able to build a very close to scale and functional aircraft.

As far as "secrets" are concerned, I have little patience for such attitudes. I think that the customer base for such a kit is quite limited and how they figure that it will not be duplicated in some way if the kit is sold is a mystery to me. I believe that I'll make a purchase of the Bentley plans and work on this from my corner of the world; producing a model like this is nothing new to me and will be a lot of fun. Rest assured that if I come up with something worthy there will be no secrets.

Your model is coming along quite nicely...I'm very excited about it; great work!

you are right, when the kit is out some day, then it can be copied!
(I just told you what they said to me)

Still it is easier to get a CNC-cut kit, than to make it all by yourselfe. If you take the plan from Arthur Bentley, try to build the HO-229 in a mould bed, because it will not be easy to create all the different angles and washout without. The angle starts at about 6 degree and goes down to 0 at the wing tips and also you have different washout. Every wing half has about 15-17 rips, each with different angle and washout.

with regard to calculating reflex for flying wings I came across an excel spreadsheet called twist. All you do is input the span, sweep angle, desired speed range etc and it will calulate the required wing twist.
It came from one of the nurflugel websites.http://www.b2streamlines.com/Panknin.html (just did some digging)

Like BobtheNuke, I don't believe in secrets. That's why I'm doing my Ho 229 design "open source" (ala Linux). We may be fumbling in the dark a bit, but whatever we learn will be public, as will all of the CAD drawings. We have a thread going in the "Scratchbuilding & Design" forum on RCSCALEBUILDER.com. As I posted on that thread recently, anyone thinking they're going to make a fortune on Ho 229 kits is kidding themselves! This is simply not a mass-market item.

I do plan to sell plans and parts eventually, for those that don't want to go to the trouble of making up a kit themselves. First we have to work out the rather sticky design problems however!

Like BobtheNuke, I don't believe in secrets. That's why I'm doing my Ho 229 design "open source" (ala Linux). We may be fumbling in the dark a bit, but whatever we learn will be public, as will all of the CAD drawings. We have a thread going in the "Scratchbuilding & Design" forum on RCSCALEBUILDER.com. As I posted on that thread recently, anyone thinking they're going to make a fortune on Ho 229 kits is kidding themselves! This is simply not a mass-market item.

I do plan to sell plans and parts eventually, for those that don't want to go to the trouble of making up a kit themselves. First we have to work out the rather sticky design problems however!

Gary

Gary, I'm with you on this. However, I have to say this...Heiner is building what looks like a great model, but his friend has asked him to keep the details and plans to himself. I understand this if he's trying to make money from this, but whatever he makes will, as you mentioned, be negligable. I would find it comforting if he were to sell plans now, as Matt Halten did for his F-14, and with those of us interested in building it we could de-bug it and provide a collective beta test to clean up the problems and little issues that will most likely occur.

Heiner, if you're reading this pehaps you can convey this feeling to your friend. I believe that Matt ended up with much more in good will, friends, and improvements to his F-14 project (as well as selling the rights to an American kit manufacturer and a substantial number of plans) than if he had kept it a "secret". One thing that must also be considered is that the cost of kits from Germany are quite prohibitive, as some of us have found out when considering purchases from your fine country.

As Gary suggests, I'd rather spend the time in development to come up with a good model than deal with high prices and funky secretive attitudes. But being able to purchase a set of plans on line for a fairly decent plane that much of the work has been done on is certainly preferable.

I would consider offering plans of stuff for free, but only after the prototype had flown, considering the possible backlash if no-one can get the plane flying from the provided plans. There are some people out there that expect everything to work first time. If it doesn't they look for someone to blame. At least if there is one flying prototype they can't blame the design. Then there is the rest of us, who: build, debug, fly, improve. This way the designer ends up with a better design.